Sandra Blow

The life of Sandra Blow (1925-2006) was as exciting as the works she produced. "Lucian [Freud] once took me to the top of a bombed church in Soho," she told an interviewer of her post-war years in London. "There were two towers left and he leapt over the gap. 'You can't possibly expect me to do that,' she said. 'Just think of it as if you were on the escalator in Selfridges,' Freud replied."

Sandra Blow was a pioneering artist, expressing new and exciting ideas and practices through her work. Emerging amidst post-war austerity, Blow’s early canvases are a mixture of traditional painterly materials, as well as the sawdust and cloth that littered her studio. These beginnings defined the manner in which she continued to work; her pieces are as much about texture as their visual impact.

Blow's paintings reflect the societal moods around her, as well as the deeply personal: the colour and liberation in her canvases from the 1960s, the optimism and energy following her relocation to St. Ives in her seventies. The boldness of her pieces continues to stop you in your tracks.

Image: © Eamonn McCabe (2005)